Wing_Leader
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Everyone has their favorite and least favorite trials. For every person who hates TPN and regards it as a tedious bore, there is probably someone who loves it. Opinions are so divided on the storytelling and the task structure of these trials, that it is hard even for me to ferret out any sort of consensus on such matters. But whatever else one might say about any given trial, there is one weakness I feel they all share, and that is that they are constructed and presented in such a way that it is nearly impossible for a league to succeed the first time through. And sometimes not even the second or third time through.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
The whole thing is just mind numbingly bad. The technical problems are really frosting on an crap-cake.
It is one thing for a group of players to be presented with problems/objectives and obstacles to solving/achieving them, to come up with a plan of action, and then fail for lack of good execution (or lack of good tactical improvisation when surprises come along). It is another thing entirely for the "challenge" to come in the form of a mission for which the objectives are cryptic, illogical, or given in the wrong order (e.g., the purpose of molecular acid isn't made clear until after you complete the phase in which you obtain them), or in the form of gimmicks that no league could reasonably prepare for or compensate for because of overwhelming (often autohit and/or irresistable) damage or lack of time. It is my feeling that any mission/trial that has a first-time success rate as abyssmally low as the iTrials is poorly conceived/designed, as a matter of axiomatic truthiness. -
There are probably at least a hundred costume bits, most of them shield and weapons skins, that I will probably never use simply because I don't make weapons-based characters. But even though I have no use for them, I would like to see every costume bit in the game available for purchase.
The whole idea of "earning" costume options doesn't really make sense to me. If I were to choose a Roman belt for a brand new alt, for example, it wouldn't be because I want it to look like that character has been to Cimerora and completed the epic task of taking down Romulus and returning the land to Imperious. It would be because that belt happens to fit a costume concept that is entirely independent of that piece's in-game origin.
I heartily applauded the decision to make capes and auras available for purchase from the PM. This should extend, I feel, to anything and everything that can be selected for a character through the costume editor, no matter what bit of in-game content normally unlocks it. There are plenty of reasons to do the game's content; unlocking exclusive costume pieces shouldn't be one of them, IMO. Costume pieces are pure fashion; they have no impact on game mechanics and, therefore, shouldn't be locked behind content or achievement barriers (ala temp powers and Accolades). -
Quote:Yes, very true. And I feel bad for them when it is obvious they are out of their league, playing higher level characters in zones/missions that demand more experience with the game than they clearly have. I feel bad because I want these young kids to have a good time and learn to love the game, but I don't have the patience to be their tutor. I will explain various subtle aspects of the game to newcomers who are missing a key concept or two here and there, but its not my job to teach remedial CoX. When I encounter players who are rude, obnoxious, inconsiderate (like door sitters), or simply in over their head, I'll usually just say "Thanks for the team!" and quietly leave for (hopefully) greener pastures.Originally Posted by gameboy1234
One thing to keep in mind is that some young children often play this game (Sister Flame). Sometimes on their parent's account.
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Quote:I think most of us have felt this way the first time we entered a new iTrial. And the second time, and the third time... This was especially true for me during my first few Lambda runs because by the time I was iLeveling my main, everyone on Virtue had done it so many times they were resorting to Speed Lambdas just to make it worth their while. To say I was completely lost as to where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do, particularly during the "sabotage" phase, is an understatement.Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
And like a lot of trials... I'm really not sure what I was doing or if it helped or not.
Now, the way I see it, either the iTrials were purposely designed to be cryptic puzzles with no clear rationale, or they ended up that way by accident. This is a failure state either way, as far as I'm concerned. Just like all the rest of the mission content in the game, it should be obvious and clear exactly what needs to be done, with reasonable opportunities to develop a coherent plan of action right from the very first time you do it. BAF is, more or less, designed that way except for the sequestering gimmick, but it stands alone in this respect, I feel.
Most missions in the game are do-once-and-move-on, and so they pretty much have to be designed so the average player of the appropriate level can succeed without having done that specific mission before. I don't feel that the iTrials should be an exception to that design philosophy merely because they are billed as the most "challenging" end-game content available. -
Quote:That's why I never check anyone's badge list...I'm too afraid of what I'll find.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I should have gone back and explained but was too lazy to edit that one of the deaders had 33 months of vet rewards.
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I run my L50 Tips in Atlas because it is a relatively small zone, everything is easy to get to, all the "character services" in the game are available there (including a Vanguard DPO in case I want to switch to running iTrials), and I only have to leave for the two in IP as StarGeek pointed out. When I run out of Tips, I just pop into the RWZ and beat up on whatever's around until a Tip drops.
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Quote:Yuck. Maybe one way to minimize that situation is to play on the Exalted server? *shrug*Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Thanks for reminding me. I was on a crappy team doing a DfB recently. We started off with 8 people.
One person stood at the DfB entrance the whole time and his only comments to the team inquiries was "I'm lost."
Two people managed to get themselves killed at the Hellion AV and kept demanding they be rezzed by players who were all Tanks, Blasters, and Scrappers.
When we got to the Vaz AV three of the five remaining players (the two deaders ended up quitting because we "refused" to rez them, and the doofus at the entrance was still claiming to be "lost".) who wanted the badges ignored instructions and started killing minions.
Then when we got to the Lost AV they did just the opposite and managed to kill the AV before the Lost minions were killed. One of them quit then because he didn't like being told that they screwed up the badges themselves by not following instructions.
That left us with four people and the door sitter to finish off the Booger monsters at the end. And after it was over the door sitter got pissed because we disbanded the team and made sure the team leader of the new DfB knew what he did on our previous DfB run.
Don't know what happened to the ones that quit the trial early. They weren't around when we finished and joined the new DfB team.
I honestly don't know if there is any solution to teaming with bad players since you don't know they are bad players until you're stuck on a team with them. This is going to be a perpetual problem in the DfB trial since it is like Mos Eisley, but replace "scum and villainy" with "newbs and cluelessness". They bring in too many bad, or just plain inapplicable, habits from other MMOs, and a dozen runs through DfB isn't necessarily going to cure them of that. These days, a level 16 character doesn't imply "I know how to play reasonably well," because it could just as easily be a case of "I know the DfB really well but I don't know a thing about any of the powers I got after level 2."
Right now the only tools we have to avoid such players is the "star system" and the ability to pre-form our own teams. The LFG queue isn't likely to be a viable alternative to these vital "manual" methods any time soon. -
I always wanted an AT that was like a tank with better dps. With a Brute I get Nearly a Tanker + Nearly a Scrapper, which is the perfect balance for me.
As others have said, a Tanker will generally outperform a Brute in terms of pure survivability and aggro management, and a Scrapper can outperform a Brute in terms of dps under the right circumstances. So if you want a specialist in one area or the other, I imagine Tankers and Scrappers are better choices. But for an AT that gives you very nearly the same performance as both in one package, it can't be beat for certain styles of play (i.e., "I want to be uber useful but I don't need to be 100% maxed out in one particular area of the game"). -
Quote:So I take it the "default" selection algorithm for the new LFG queue has not been publicly described/explained by the devs (yet)?Originally Posted by Hopeling
Which TF they'd end up on might be some default value (Posi 1 would be the most obvious, but it might also choose the first alphabetically, or the highest-level TF they're all eligible for, or some other criteria), or maybe it would choose randomly, depending on implementation.
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Quote:Suppose there are 100 people in the LFG queue waiting for "First available", and nobody putting themselves in the queue for anything specific. What happens? Is everyone stuck waiting until someone comes along and selects something specific?Originally Posted by gameboy1234
A lot of us are asking to at least see the number of people queued for each Trial/TF. It would help folks pile onto a team once they saw some folks waiting for an event.
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The whole "<blah> Age" metaphor for comics feels rather awkward to me. The only one that ever made any kind of sense to me was the Golden Age, and only because that era got its name the usual way: by being the formative period that is most fondly remembered and revered.
But all the other "ages" are just strained attempts to map to the "precious metals" metaphor, and for me it all just sounds rather silly (the non-conformity of the names "Victorian" and "Atomic" also shows how shakey the metaphor is as a whole, I think). "Silver Age" gets a pass from me because even though we don't generally see anything other than "golden age" used in other contexts (at least that I'm aware of), the era referred to as the Silver Age of comics is so important and vital in the history of the medium that it deserves a special name. Since it is generally agreed that it isn't as historically significant as the Golden Age that started it all, it naturally gets the next precious metal down on the list, Silver.
Beyond that, I don't think the subsequent ages really deserve special recognition. But scholars like to label everything they study this way, especially scholars of literary criticism-ish fields, so it isn't exactly a surprising development. Most fans, I think, have no use for any of the distinctions outside of Golden and Silver, which makes the others mostly of interest only to academics and collectors. -
Quote:And rightly so, I'd say.Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
...and that is why full defender teams get revered so much...
But it wasn't always the case. When four of my regular CoH-playing friends and I ran our all-Defender team back in 2006, we were routinely laughed at by passing solo players. And the rare times we would add another player (usually to fulfill TF requirements), they almost always expressed skeptical surprise at having joined an entire team of Defenders. But that surprise always turned to utter astonishment (and tearful joy) when they saw how fast we chewed through mobs. AVs were usually running away from us in less than sixty seconds, which many players had never seen before. -
CoX promotes the idea, from the tutorial on up, that each of us can solo just about any mob in a mission, regardless of AT. I've noticed that this results in teams of soloists, where each feels it is his or her duty to go fight their own mob and team tactics be damned. The game gives everyone the impression they are Michael Jordan, so it should be no surprise that everyone acts like they have the ball and should do all the scoring.
The usual argument I see from vets against the idea of formal team tactics is that it slows things down and lowers the xp/sec rate. Or that it turns every mission into a dull exercise of following the same (winning) combat script over and over. Which is kinda true, but I think finding and executing a successful team combat sequence is a good habit to get into so that when you do occasionally find the situation turning pear-shaped, the team is in a far better position to handle it. Of course, this is more practical with a team of friends who play together a lot, not PuGs, but if everyone learned (and valued) their team role as much as their solo productivity, PuGs might not be so iffy a proposition. -
Quote:This. Is. Awesome.Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
Take Gale, for instance. All it does is knockback enemies, and other than a second of damage mitigation there is really no benefit to fighting enemies slightly to the left of where they spawned. But during Keyes I discovered that Gale is one of the best powers to move Warworks away from Terminals. So now my favorite thing to do on Keyes while I'm on my /Storm troller is fly up to the top floor of the reactor, and then use Gale and Hurricane to throw the enemies off the top floor. It's hilarious, and it is more effective than if a tanker tried to taunt the WW away.
If my character was on a Keyes with your character and saw this, she'd give your character a virtual kiss on the cheek.
Controller Primaries Seem to Get the Shaft
I sympathize with this issue because I want Controllers to feel they are useful during the iTrials so they will run them. There are phases in some trials where having control as a primary is critical (MoM comes immediately to mind). But even if a Controller is spending more time using their secondary, that buffing/debuffing secondary is so bloody useful that I would hate to see it dismissed or lamented by anyone, least of all Controllers (and Doms) themselves! -
1. Keyes - Probably the best rewards-to-difficulty ratio of them all. And it doesn't take that long or require lots of +2s and +3s just to keep the purple patch at bay.
2. BAF - Easy and fast. Almost mindless in that I can do about three other things at the same time (watch Castle, do my taxes, feed the cat, etc.)
3. TPN - Easy and not too time-consuming for great rewards, assuming you have the level shifts needed to keep up the pressure and not lose due to public opinion.
4. UG - Long but probably the most interesting, and great rewards. Big time committment though (compared to the others), and it is easy to fail if people aren't on their toes against the WarWalkers or the Avatar.
5. MoM - Least reward for the time and effort in my book. Its only virtues are the untimed breather you get between each stage and the 2/1 Empyrean merit schedule. The purple patch and the three minute timer in the final fight mock any league without lots of +2s and +3s (necessary to compensate for the weakened state everyone is forced into).
6. Lambda - My least favorite, especially when run as a "speed Lam" (or SLam). The sabotage phase is especially unpleasant. I will go farm Rikti in the RWZ for bloody vanguard merits before I'll run Lambdas. -
Use google to compare the Flash with "Golden Age Flash", or Green Lantern with "Golden Age Green Lantern", etc.
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Invulnerability (with Tanker softcaps).
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If all that is true, then I don't understand why my Brute seems to be as welcome on teams as any other AT, and just as effective within the role designed for it. DPS, survivability, and aggro management are all very useful qualities which Brutes have in as much abundance as any other AT you care to mention, so I don't really see how they stand out as low desirability or low usefulness.
The only time I've felt excluded from a team has been when an iTrial league specifically shouts out looking for "healing/support", indicating to me that they are already so melee heavy that I might not be as valuable as a Controller, Dominator, Defender, or Corruptor (though I've seen plenty of trollers, doms, and corrs that don't do a whole lot of team buffing except when it also benefits them).
Personally, I like seeing lots of support and ranged dps ATs on a team if only because they help to balance out the overabundance of melee characters that I constantly see in the post-50 game. But most teams seem to display an attitude of being quite happy with anyone who wants to join (and plays competently). I don't really see much in the way of a clear control/support bias during team formation, at least not on Virtue. -
Quote:Maybe it is all just semantics, but I'm not sure how anyone can have freedom without some measure of control. A common complaint I'm reading is that players playing redside never feel like villains because they don't have the freedom to act like villains, which to my eyes reads like they don't have enough control over what sorts of activities their characters engage in with regards to missions and the greater relationship they have with the game world as a whole (i.e., "We can either be lackies or anti-heroes who begrudgingly collaborate with heroes."). A hero can't decide to kill a villainous threat even if that suits "their story" better, and the fact that said villain appears later on in the story arc or in another mission chain makes the so-called freedom to solve matters in the character's own way a massive exercise in ignoring the content and "rewriting" it in one's own mind.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The argument here isn't for the development team to give us more CONTROL, it's for them to give us more FREEDOM.
It seems to me that the only meaningful way to exercise the freedom necessary to make the game feel like I'm experiencing MY stories for MY characters is if I have enough control over the environment to make choices that potentially alter the game world in ways no fixed story line could ever hope to accomodate. Armed with that sort of control (freedom?) the game would actually function as an RPG for me, not just a combat simulator with attached story rails that we ride along to give us a vaguely relevant explanation for the next fight sequence. Some new MMOs are offering a taste of this sort of freedom (control?), and they may very well feel more like an RPG than anything that has come before as a result. The sense that your character's story really is your character's story, and not just someone else's story with your avatar Mad Libbed into the blank spots, would be genuine and not so contrived.
Maybe this is where the line divides between being "the star" and being "a guest star", as you've put it. I've never played an RPG in order to be a glorified NPC in someone else's story. That sort of game where it feels like no matter what your character would actually do (or tries to do), the outcome always seem to be whatever the GM had in mind all along, is no RPG at all.
And no, I've never engaged in fan fiction. The likelihood of conflicting with canon, both past (unintentionally) and future (out of one's control) are too great to make it worth while to me. The common solution of reducing the scope of one's stories so that they never come into potentially conflicting contact with the main storylines (and characters), is unappealing to me. -
Oh man! Ouch! That's gotta hurt a little.
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Quote:Besides the obvious aesthetic advantages that female avatars have over the male ones in the game, I think that females are just intrinsically more interesting/compelling than males, period. I feel this is especially true in a kick-***-and-take-names context like superheroes.Originally Posted by NekoNeko
For the same reason guys play them. They're nicer to look at! (ba-dum-tish!)
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Quote:Mallerick paid 250mil for a single piece of common salvage. This suggests that putting in a reasonable bid and waiting patiently was not part of the equation. I'm merely pointing out that there are alternatives to straight inf when the WANT IT NAO urge takes over. Someone willing to throw 250mil at one piece of salvage is willing to throw the equivalent of 400 Reward Merits at it (that's what it would take to score two LotGs worth 250mil on the market), when a few rolls at 15 merits each would likely achieve the same outcome.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
I'd rather put in a reasonable bid and then patiently wait...
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Quote:I see the ability to impact canon and the ability to remain "compatible with" the canon as facets of the same thing. The nature of the complaints against the Well usurping character concept (by dictating one single source of all powers, for instance) are all part and parcel of the desire/expectation for the game canon to work, if not in collaboration with at least not in opposition to, the imaginations of individual players. If this is not intrinsic to the objections to the recent interpretations of the Well and its connection to The Source of Super Powers, then those objections have reached a degree of esoterica I can't wrap my head around.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You presume that people want to impact events and be included in canon, then claim it's not possible, therefore the argument is invalid. OF COURSE it's impossible. We realise it's impossible, so we don't ask for it.
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I recently needed a Magical Conspiracy for one recipe and a Military Cybernetic for another recipe. I went to the nearest Merit Vendor and rolled for random rare salvage. I got exactly what I needed on the first two rolls. A whopping 30 Reward Merits expended. Millions in influence saved.
If I'm going to gamble with my in-game resources, I'd rather play with fixed odds I know first, and then with the completely unpredictable chaos of the consignment market second. Hell, I'd rather spend a few minutes earning AE tickets and know I can get exactly what I want, than just throw my inf away, nine figures at a time. -
The more I think about this thread, the more it occurs to me that objections to the Well's characterization/definition, and the storytelling surrounding it, come mostly from people trying to treat this game like a legitimate RPG. Except that it really isn't (no MMORPG is). It is, at best, a slightly interactive animated comic book, written by the devs who have left places for us to plug in our avatars and controls for us to choose attack animations and fx during appropriate moments. But make no mistake, our actions have no long-term peristent impact. We actually have no meaningful agency in the game world because there are no persistent effects that we can claim to be the cause of. If Nightstar and Siege are "permenantly" removed from the story, it isn't because we the players chose that outcome, it is because the devs made that the incontrovertible outcome of "succeeding" the BAF, and there are no other possible consequences or outcomes available as success vectors.
Consequently, I have come to realize that I will either like or dislike the storylines as fed to me by the devs, much like any comic book out there, and that I am ultimately a passive participant, relegated to the role of illustrator for a script written by others and for which I have no real input (proof of this is that every story arc plays out the same way no matter what AT or powerset I play and no matter what backstory I might imagine for my character). That's why the most satisfaction I get is from making a costume I really enjoy watching, with power effects/animations I enjoy watching, because my selections of those things (along with their color, to a limited degree) are the only things I have any substantial control over. None of us are really playing "characters" so much as we are driving game sprites, albeit somewhat sophisticated 3D sprites. Speaking in character with other players is about as far as the "roleplaying" can ever really get, but roleplaying and roleplay gaming are not the same thing (the former is but a single aspect of the latter).
Trying to invent a whole bunch of personal character lore that can fit within the CoX canon, and remain valid and uncontradicted by future changes, just seems like a huge waste of time to me. Particularly since not a single thing I might write into my character's backstory will have a single iota of impact on game outcomes.
But let me be clear about one thing: I do not need CoX to function as an RPG in order to enjoy it. If that weren't the case, I would have given up on it back in 2004 after the first 30 days of play. Its ability to deliver the passive, pseudo-interactive animated comic book experience has been enough to keep me addicted, on and off, for many years. I just don't fool myself into thinking I'm going to get an RPG experience from it, and consequently I don't have any unrealistic expectations about what the game can and will deliver. Everyone upset about the Well, the Incarnate storyline, or any storyline for that matter, and how it knocks over the apple cart of their characters' elaborately consctructed backstories (or in-game meta-narratives) are, to my mind, suffering from mismatched expectations.
TL;DR
Don't expect CoX to deliver a vehicle for roleplay gaming in which you have any genuine control over anything resembling "story", because the presence of "RPG" in the MMORPG label is as profoundly misleading as it is oversimplistic. You may be better off just treating it as a pseudo-interactive animated comic book, like I do, and leave any other more elaborate ambitions/expectations at the door.